The Department of Agriculture has informed the owners of three mink farms in Ireland that their mink are to be culled to halt the potential spread of a mutated form of the Covid-19.
A "variant" of the virus was detected in mink on a farm in Denmark. Public Health authorities globally are concerned that the variant form could prove more resistant to antibodies and say if the mutated virus was to spread it could severely impact on the effectiveness of vaccines.
Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan has said that Ireland's farmed mink population should be culled because of concerns about a mutated form of Covid-19 detected in a mink farm in Denmark.